1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of controlling content access, and more particularly to, a method of controlling content access by forming a user group and providing an authorized content access to the user group.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1A is a diagram illustrating a structure of a home network. Referring to FIG. 1A, the home network comprises a home server and user devices. The home server receives contents from an external source and administers domains or contents of the user devices. The home server administers a join and a leave of the user devices to and from domains of the user devices, and prevents an unauthorized user from obtaining contents by encrypting the contents.
A user inputs a command to the home server, the home server receives the command and transmits a reproduction command to the user devices, and the user devices reproduce contents according to the reproduction command.
FIG. 1B is a block diagram illustrating a conventional method of controlling content access. Referring to FIG. 1B, a home server encrypts contents using a content key to generate encrypted contents. The home server encrypts the content key using a domain key to generate an encrypted content key. The domain key is transmitted to a user device that belongs to a domain of a home network according to a domain management. Then, the contents and the content keys, encrypted at the request of a user, are transmitted to user devices.
User devices decrypt the encrypted content keys using the domain keys to obtain the content keys and decrypt the encrypted contents using the content keys to obtain the contents.
However, such a conventional method of controlling content access cannot provide an authorized content access to an individual user. For example, it is impossible to control content access by dividing all members of a family into a major group and a minor group and authorizing the major group to reproduce contents that are not allowed for the minor group.